Straits of Hell

by Taylor Anderson

  Blair considered, then nodded. “If anyone can get the most out of those undisciplined ruffians, Blas and Finny will.”

  “Excellent. That’s settled.” He smiled, but shifted uneasily, staring at the map. “We will win,” he stressed again, “but it will be costly in many ways.” His smile faded. “We built this fort for a larger force than we currently have. It’s as simple as that, and the outer wall is just too long to sufficiently defend. In strictest confidence I must tell you that I consider it inevitable that the Doms will breach it at some point, probably in yours—and Captain Blas’s—sector. We must bleed them white before they do, and that’s why your men and Lemurians, our very best,” he stipulated again, “must remain in place: to kill as many of the enemy as they possibly can before they’re pushed back. I’m making other preparations based on that assumption, pulling men and guns from the southwest ramparts. Those have thus far only been lightly engaged and are likely to remain so. No large force can march entirely around the fort to exploit a breakthrough there in any case, so I’ll use those men and guns to bolster our inner defenses.” He looked hard at Blair, who’d grown suddenly more alert. “The enemy will get in,” he predicted darkly, “but I truly believe that the deadly space between the walls is where we’ll finally break them.” He paused, before continuing in a quiet tone. “Even if it breaks our hearts to do it.”

  He took a long breath, gauging Blair’s reaction.

  “Strictest confidence,” Blair repeated slowly. “Surely that does not exclude Captain Blas?”

  “I’m afraid it must,” Shinya said, his eyes narrowing. “By that I mean that you are to tell no one at all. Spies concern me.”

  “But spies are a constant concern. I’m sure our local ranks are thick with them. And they’ll see the redeployments anyway, and report them if they have the means.”

  “That’s why we do it now, at the last moment, so to speak. But I think the enemy will now do what they mean to do regardless. We can respond to changing dispositions more quickly than he. What I fear more than his knowledge of our redeployments is his understanding of what they mean—and what our underlying expectations might be. That’s why you must tell no one”—he looked away—“and because even Captain Blas must not suspect that we expect her to lose the wall. She loves her Marines and might pull them back sooner if she knew.” He shrugged. “I would. But we need her to stand as long as she can not only to kill more Doms, but to make them absolutely sure that when she does pull back it was because she had to—and so they’ll send everything they have left in after her. In between the walls,” he added grimly. “Now,” he said, suddenly brisk, “having expressed my concern for a night attack, I find myself somewhat anxious. I don’t know how far back it goes, so you may not know it, but our American friends have a saying: ‘Speak of the devil and he will appear at your door,’ or something like that. Orderly!” he cried, to be heard over the cannonade outside.

  “Sur?” replied a Lemurian corporal, bursting through the entrance.

  “Paper and pen, if you please, then have runners stand by to take orders. He glanced apologetically at Blair. “You’ll see that the redeployment in your sector is complete before you sleep?”

  “Of course, General Shinya,” Blair said, his tone still tired, but now sounding sick at heart as well.

  “Thank you. I’ll send the instructions we’ve already discussed immediately, so hopefully there won’t be much left for you to do when you get there. While we wait, however, let’s see what we can come up with for these other ‘weak’ points I’ve identified.”

  CHAPTER 28

  ////// Puerto Viejo

  Trying to stand out of the way on the hastily built docks in the torch-lit darkness, Governor-Empress Rebecca Anne McDonald, High Chief Saan-Kakja, and Surgeon Commander Selass-Fris-Ar, who’d accompanied them to help with (and protect the two leaders from) the fever—and the battle casualties to come—watched with mounting frustration as their reinforcements tried to disembark at Puerto Viejo. All had seen confusion before, in similar circumstances. They’d even seen what they might’ve defined as chaos. But in her anxiety to move immediately to General Shinya’s relief, Rebecca was convinced that what she now beheld was something even worse, though she had no name for it. All three wore what had become regulation female naval officers’ uniforms for their respective powers. Saan-Kakja and Selass were in white tunics and kilts, and Rebecca wore a dark blue tunic with white knee breeches and black boots. Sergeant “Lord” Koratin stood silently nearby, conspicuous as usual in what had become the Lemurian-Amer-i-caan Marine “dress” uniform of a blue smock and kilt and white rhino pig armor. Their dress was the only thing in view that seemed remotely ordered. Koratin remained Sister Audry’s primary military advisor, but also directly commanded the detail of men and ’Cats protecting the two leaders. Despite his well-cultivated outward calm, his own exasperation was clear in the guttering orange light by the way his tail whipped back and forth.

  Smaller than Guayak, Puerto Viejo was otherwise similar in architecture and culture, with its mixture of stone and brick public buildings surrounded by adobe huts and ultimately, wood and thatch shacks. Unfortunately, directly on the coast, its harbor wasn’t nearly as well protected or really even suitable for large ships. Somehow, the Imperial surveyors hadn’t sufficiently stressed this to any of the planners involved when it was decided that Puerto Viejo should become the primary forward supply port for General Shinya’s forces at Fort Defiance. Only now, when supply was critical and a major effort was underway, did the inadequacies of the early studies fully reveal themselves. For example, there’d apparently never been any kind of real docks at the small coastal city before; the local fishermen and traders had merely pulled their bright-painted boats straight up on the dun-colored sand. And the new docks, still under construction by Imperial engineers and local labor, were hasty, ramshackle affairs, not nearly up to the task of dealing with the sudden, frantic influx of ships, troops, and material.

  It hadn’t begun so frantically, when the first ships began dribbling in several days before Rebecca and Saan-Kakja’s greater force appeared, but instead of clearing the way for them and making it easier to land the reinforcements they brought, the early arrivals only fed the stirring bedlam to come. To be fair, they’d been former “company” ships for the most part, merchantmen still manned by old crews with new commissions. They’d been dispatched with cargoes from the fleet or the Enchanted Isles weeks before, and without wireless, had no notion of the logjam they were creating when they leisurely choked the ridiculously insufficient docks with their cargoes. Some of those cargoes had been crated Nancys and their support—but no one had reported that there were no facilities whatsoever to receive them either, and the energetic surf made it impossible to operate the planes directly from shore. It was discovered that Imperial engineers had been preparing ramps and docks at a small lake northeast of town for their use, where a small squadron of overworked Nancys already made its base, but that information and the necessary coordination had been neglected as well. Now the crates languished, in the way and dangerously exposed to damage while their irate ground crews tried to arrange their transport.

  And as bedlam has a tendency to do, it only got worse from there. The Puerto Viejans themselves were a mixed blessing. Just as isolated from and persecuted by the Church and Blood Priests of His Supreme Holiness, they’d learned of Guayak’s resistance, with the help of the strangers from the West, and joined the rebellion against the hated Dominion. Now, as news reached them of the terrible battle raging beyond the rising foothills to the east, and word inexplicably but inevitably spread of the great battle at sea, they were fearful of the Dominion’s wrath. They remained helpful, even hopeful. What choice did they have? It was much too late to turn back now. But in their fear-stoked zeal to help the Allies help them, they’d wildly compounded the prevailing confusion when nearly the entire population of the city; men, women, even c
hildren, almost spontaneously took it upon themselves to swarm aboard ships crammed haphazardly against the freshly planted piers—and now one another—to “help” unload them. Ships waiting farther out were dragged ashore, leaning in the surf, and hundreds of small boats mobbed them as well. Faced with letting them “help” or killing them, Rebecca had finally ordered everyone to join the locals in unloading everything and getting it ashore as quickly as they could, however they could.

  The 1st Maa-ni-laa, Saan-Kakja’s personal guard and the only Lemurian regiment she’d brought, and Sister Audry’s Regimento de Redentores, her former Dom prisoners of war, had been the only reinforcements to get ashore in reasonably good order before the chaos struck. They’d landed slightly down the coast as if assaulting an unfriendly shore before marching into the city where, after unsuccessfully trying to regain order, they simply guarded and tried to sort the growing, jumbled mountains of supplies, guns, horses and paalkas, more crated aircraft—everything they’d brought to this place—as it piled up on the beach. But the other troopships with the majority of the Imperial Marines hadn’t been equipped for a combat landing, having been meant to off-load at Guayak where the already-better docks had been further improved. They remained anchored offshore like outcast geese, still thick with troops for the most part, as boats of every description belatedly scurried to carry their human cargoes to the same beach the 1st Maa-ni-laa and the Redentores had used.

  “May the Heavens preserve us—and General Shinya—from such good intentions in the future,” Saan-Kakja murmured dryly.

  “I agree with your sentiment,” Selass said, “but it is pleasant to be appreciated.”

  “They appreciate us because they’re terrified,” Rebecca said more harshly, the tone seeming unnatural from her elfin face. It was a tone she’d used almost exclusively over the last few days; a tone directed more at herself than anyone else. She remained sure that her own meddling had caused what she considered the near disaster at sea and blamed herself for all the damage, deaths, and looming impotence of the fleet. Now, as an extension of that, she was just as sure the turmoil here was her fault as well. “And they have reason to be terrified,” she added amid the uncomfortable blinking of her friends, “because if we can’t bring some order to the calamity I’ve set in motion, the entire war in the East may well be lost.”

  “Skuggik shit,” Koratin pronounced in his once-soft voice turned gruff, then blinked at Rebecca as innocently as his rough countenance would allow. “‘Shit’ is right? Sometimes the proper words still hide from me.” He shook his head at her. “Perhaps your orders to High Ahd-mi-raal Jenks were ill-advised. Only time will tell, and to dwell on such things now can only do harm. But have you considered that, without Taask Force Eleven as bait, the Doms might have refused battle against the whole of Second Fleet, and drawn it back in pursuit to a place of their choosing, where many great guns on shore could add to their advantage? Or how would the whole fleet together have fared had the Grikbirds not largely spent themselves on the smaller force? Discovering the truth of that is a task for the tellers of tales—the, ah, ‘histori-aans’—when the war is done. What we do know is that the Dom fleet Ahd-mi-raal Jenks met will not threaten us here.” He gave a very human shrug. “Perhaps another will, but I do not think so.” He nodded toward where Sister Audry’s regiment was deployed around the growing mounds of supplies. “I am no sailor, any more than our interesting Col-nol Araano Gar-ciaa, but I have learned much from him about the enemy. Possibly as much as he has learned about himself,” he added with a blink of irony. “As a junior officer, he knew nothing of the eastern reaches of the Dominion, the ‘Pass of Fire,’ or any more fleets they may have had beyond it. But he confirmed what I have long suspected. The Doms do not hold back, straa-teegic-ally, any more than the Grik once did. They use what they have, all they have, to achieve their purpose. They may ‘hold back’ on the battlefield for an advantage there, in much the same way we always try to keep a reserve, but I believe, and Col-nol Gar-ciaa agrees, that if the Doms have yet another fleet, they would have sent it too—unless they need it elsewhere.”

  That left them to ponder that, as well as the implication that Fred and Kari’s mysterious “other Americans” were already being of help, somehow, somewhere. But Koratin’s statement reinforced Rebecca’s primary worry over Shinya’s somewhat cryptically reported sense that the Doms were “holding back.” Aerial observers updated the disposition of the enemy forces around Fort Defiance as often as they could, but the picture was far from complete. There weren’t as many dragons as they’d been facing in the past, and it was assumed many had gone north to the Pass of Fire, if not to the Dom fleet, but there were enough to make things difficult for the few planes still in action. The only thing that seemed certain was that Don Hernan’s army still numbered upward of a hundred thousand men. No reinforcements could reach him unobserved down the military road from the north, but what might be moving to join him from beyond the mountains to the east? Was he waiting for something else? Was that why he was “holding back”? She feared that must be the case, and that made the situation here even more agonizing for her.

  Koratin waved again at the surging, shouting mob. Crates of weapons, bundled tents, casks of food, ammunition, and barrels of everything from gunpowder to rum and musket flints were flowing ashore, the civilian bearers being guided, funneled, and sometimes physically shoved in the general direction that roaring sailors thought they should take their burdens. Sometimes they got the gist of the foreign commands, but more often they just deposited their loads on the closest pile and went back for more. Horses shrieked and whinnied in alarm or annoyance as they thundered down the gangways, and paalkas mooed resignedly as they dragged guns, limbers, caissons, forges, wireless carts. . . . It was chaos, surely, but every imaginable thing an army needed in the field was very quickly going ashore.

  “This is not so bad, after all,” Koratin continued. “I have seen worse—far worse when Aryaal fell, if you recall. But worse also when our armies have landed on other shores, even unopposed.” He snorted. “It is confusing. War always is. You forget that my people, Aryaalans like General Protector Lord Muln Rolak”—he showed sharp, yellow teeth at some secret amusement—“were among the very few Mi-Anakka who always fought wars. We boasted so among ourselves of what ambitious, important things they were, and bragged of our courageous deeds,” he said as if reminiscing, but his eyes blinked self-mockery. “And yet even the insignificant arguments those wars were compared to this were just as disorderly when viewed from within at the time.”

  “If that is true, Lord Koratin,” Selass said, nodding at his swishing tail and addressing him with the old title he’d worn when they met but no longer liked or claimed, “why are you so anxious?”

  “Is it not obvious?” Saan-Kakja said. “He is little concerned for us at present, but believes Don Hernaan has brought ‘all he has’ to destroy Gener-aal Shinyaa.”

  She feels it too, Rebecca realized. “And worries what he ‘holds back,’ as General Shinya suspects, and when it will be felt,” she reaffirmed, looking at Koratin with her large eyes reflecting the torchlight.

  Sergeant Lord Koratin bowed to her.

  “General Shinya has not begged that we come at once,” Selass speculated, “but then, he would never ‘beg,’ would he?”

  “No,” Saan-Kakja said with certainty. “But he has described his situation and concerns—and will expect us to act accordingly.”

  “We must go to him at once,” Rebecca stated firmly, “but it will be days before our entire force can move to his relief!” she added, almost snarling.

  “Then we take what we can,” Saan-Kakja said mildly, soothingly, patting her “sister’s” arm.

  Rebecca glared at the rough, uneven planks of the dock for a moment, then looked at Koratin just as intently. “It comes down to it at last, then, I suppose. Do you truly trust Colonel Garcia?”

  “I do, Your M
ajesty,” he said. “But what is more important, Sister Audry does—and the entire Regimento de Redentores would throw themselves in the terrible sea if she demanded it.” He blinked irony. “Having saved them from their evil faith, they believe perhaps more strongly than you recognize that they owe her their very souls.” He paused and gazed casually down beyond the waterfront where a company of Redentores was trying to form itself in the crush. “As do I,” he added softly.

  Koratin had probably been Sister Audry’s very first Lemurian convert to Christianity, if not true Catholicism. He openly admitted that before he’d experienced a very personal tragedy and met the Dutch nun, he’d been as vain and corrupt as any lord of Aryaal, and more infamously conniving than most. But even then he’d had his principles—and an adoration of younglings. Having lost his own, he found that Sister Audry’s teachings had helped direct his quest for a meaningful life—beyond the personal vengeance he’d sought—and he’d devoted his soul to protecting younglings. His cause then naturally became the war against the Grik, and then the Dominion, because both enemies represented the most direct, existential threats to younglings everywhere, human and Lemurian. Despite his past, he could’ve risen to a position of leadership in the Alliance, as a representative from Aryaal, at least. Instead, he’d defended Baalkpan along with all the other huddled refugees from other lands and Homes when the Grik came there at last. Distinguishing himself in battle, he’d become a Marine, and earned the rank of sergeant. That title meant far more to him than “lord” ever had, and he’d declared he’d stay a sergeant forever. He knew the power of higher rank would only corrupt him again, and as a sergeant he could protect and serve the “youngling” leaders of Maa-ni-la and the Empire of the New Britain Isles, while continuing to protect and advise Sister Audry—who cared nothing for rank in any case.